In some systems, an appliance provides a client computer with access to a network. In one kind of system, an appliance may provide the client computer with secure access to a private network via virtual private network (VPN) connection. The client computer may use a client agent to access the functionality or services provided by the appliance. For example, the client agent may establish a virtual private network connection to a network via the appliance. In some cases, the client agent may be installed under an administrative user or with administrative privileges. As such, any changes to the client agent may also require administrative privileges.
Typically, a network administrator may deploy an appliance to provide access to the network to a multitude of non-administrative users, such as remote or mobile users. In some cases, the administrator may install on the appliance software maintenance revisions, updates or upgrades to the appliance. In other cases, the administrator may replace an appliance with a newer version of hardware, such as another model. In one case, a newer version of the client agent is available. In another cases, the appliance may work with one or more versions of a client agent. As a result of any of these cases, the network administrator may want to deploy a different version of the client agent to the vast user community. However, the deployment and installation of the client agent to client computers of non-administrative users can be challenging as the non-administrative users do not have the required administrative privileges. Furthermore, users of the system may be frustrated with not having the most up-to-date client agent, an inappropriate version of the client agent, or having to spend the time to install or get installed the client agent.
It would, therefore, be desirable to provide systems and methods for efficiently allowing a client computer of a non-administrative user to automatically detect, install and use a changed version of a client agent.